


Der Freischütz

by indigostohelit



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:32:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/pseuds/indigostohelit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they first meet he’s fresh out of the army, dishonorable discharge and all, and the rage behind his eyes is barely checked. He’s a ticking time bomb, and Moriarty has a use for bombs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Der Freischütz

**Author's Note:**

> Der Freischütz is a German opera about a marksman who is almost tricked into a deal with the Devil. I imagine Moran's story to have a different sort of ending.

He’s fresh out of the army, dishonorable discharge and all, and the rage behind his eyes is barely checked. He’s a ticking time bomb, and Moriarty has a use for bombs.

That’s how he’ll hear it later, when his rage has cooled from psychotic into merely murderous. It’s what he’ll hear when he’s sitting at the Professor’s desk as he gives a lecture, taking notes on quite a different subject in a flowing, cramped hand. _My assistant, Mister Moran_ , the Professor will say to his students, and Moran will look up and give them a nod, the picture of civility.

But now he sits on one of the tables, his legs swinging, and says with the drawl of sarcasm, “What is it you want me to do, then? Deliver a dangerous book? Take care of an equation? Those things can get nasty, I’m telling ye—”

“I had heard you were one of the best shooters in the Army,” says Professor Moriarty, tidying up a stack of books.

“Best,” says Moran.

Moriarty looks up. “Hm?”

“The best shooter in the Army,” Moran says, his lips pursing. He’s got that much pride left.

“Hm, yes,” says Moriarty. “I’m afraid I don’t believe your talents haven’t been put to as good a use as they might have.”

“Damn right they haven’t,” says Moran, with a touch of appreciation. Dishonorable discharge, his arse.

Moriarty stops tidying up and half-turns to Moran. “I hate to be vulgar,” he says, “but were I to rent a certain service from you, what would be the price?”

Moran’s eyebrows go up as far as he can make them go. “A certain service,” he says, flatly.

Moriarty sighs. “There’s someone alive who I would rather were not. What exactly is the price of their assassination?”

It’s about money, then, and Moran knows it’s about money, and so does Moriarty, and even then, when Moriarty presses the coins into his hand, there’s something more to it than the little wash of relief at being able to buy dinner for another week. There’s a thrill to it, one that bypasses Moran’s brain and shoots up and down his spine like a firecracker.

He glances up and meets Moriarty’s eyes, and the soldier sense that sat on his shoulder and whispered him through Afghanistan tells him dryly that he’s just made a wrong move. But by then, of course, it’s too late.

He goes to the little flat he’s rented on one of the less dingy streets and scans the newspapers by candlelight for a legitimate job. And then he gets up and paces around his apartment, and then he sits down and reads through the Wanted ads again, and taps his pen on the table again, and paces around the place again, and again, and again, and the next morning he goes back to the college and waits outside the door until Professor Moriarty pokes his head out and says, “Ah, yes. Mister Moran.”

So then it’s about the thrill of it. It’s about how he feels when he holds a gun in his hand—the best shooter that came out of the Army, he is, and he can hit a target from a hundred yards away with a wind, and here’s a job where he’s _appreciated_. Put to use, Professor Moriarty would say.

Put to use, Professor Moriarty says. When he’s in the dingier bars of London doing business and someone who doesn’t know him already says, “Well, what d’you do, then?” Moran says, “Gun for hire.”

But soon there aren’t many in the dingier bars of London who don’t know him already, and one freezing night by the docks a man who stinks strongly of pickled herring says to him, “’Ere, where can I find Moriarty?”

“Why should I know?” says Moran.

“Well, you’re his man, ain’t you?” says the herring man.

“I’m a gun for hire,” says Moran, and spits on the street.

The herring man gives him a look and says, “Yeah, but it ain’t exactly anybody's gun they’re hiring,” and after Moran’s stuck a knife in his gut and let him roll into the sea he lets the thrill run through him, as usual, and this time he doesn’t know whether it’s from the murder or the message.

The Professor still pays him, but the coins mean something different than they used to. Moran’s sent on an errand down into the red-light district, and he sees the whores with their fans and their lipstick giggle and smile and swish their skirts, and he feels the press of the gun at his side and wonders how different they really are.

But they are different.

He travels with the Professor to Strasbourg, where they see _Der Freischütz_ and an explosion. Moran is the one who pays off the housekeeper, and the one who slips the bomb into one of the maids’ aprons, and he sits beside the Professor on the train back to England and dabs at his mouth with a napkin as the Professor makes polite conversation with men of twice his wealth and half his intelligence.

The next day, after the lecture ends, as Moran sits at the Professor’s desk and carefully copies down the plans for world war, the Professor says, “You know, when I met you, you were nothing more than a bomb.”

“Yeah?” says Moran, looking up and pausing in his writing. It’s always useful to be polite around the Professor.

“Yes,” says the Professor. “A charge, waiting to be set. Something to position in the right place at the right time and let it destroy itself.”

“That’s nice, Professor,” says Moran. “What am I now, then?”

The Professor looks at him calculatingly and says, “A gun.”

And Moran goes completely, utterly still, because guns aren’t bombs. Bombs you buy, set, and then leave as quick as you can. But a gun is more than the bullets inside it. A gun is a weapon, specialized and advanced. A gun is something you can use again and again.

A gun is something you _own_.

“Glad to be of service, Professor,” he says when his voice comes back, and the Professor, who’s been watching him with some interest, says, “I expect the feeling is mutual. Now, about the matter of Irene.”

Days later, they’re in Germany, and the men who look like twins are going on about Viking funerals. Moran barely knows what a Viking is, let alone why their funerals matter, but it kills time as they wait, and so he lets them go on.

“So they kill all his servants, right,” says one twin. “And they take all his weapons and slaves and his wife, and they stick them all on a boat. And they stick him on a boat, too, and they shove it off into the sea and set it on fire.”

“No, you’re missing it,” says the other twin. “It’s his dog. That’s the important part. When he’s dead, they put his dog at the bottom of the ship and send him off to sea. He dies with his dog at his feet, ain’t that right?”

“Sounds about right to me,” says Moran, and leans back to light his cigar.


End file.
